I am reminded at least once every week that the ability to worship freely is a gift that many others don't enjoy.
The reminder comes in the form of an e-mail from Forum-18, a religious rights watch group headquartered in Oslo, Norway, that focuses mainly on issues arising in eastern Europe and countries that were once part of the old Soviet bloc.
For example, this week I learned that people can get seriously roughed up for holding a religious service in a private home if they live in Azerbijan (just south of Armenia, near Turkey and Iran). Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups have been persecuted on a regular basis.
In Belarus, the government has stepped up pressure on the Baptist Council of Churches, an organization of Baptists who refuse to register with the government. Belarus is the only country in Europe to ban unregistered religious activity, according to Focus 18. A judge recently told the group the regulations were necessary "to protect citizens from "destructive
sects."
In Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev recently called for the need to "suppress the activity of illegal religious movements." He claimed that "tens of thousands of different missionary organisations work in Kazakhstan," which is surely a bold exaggeration. "We don't know their purposes and intentions, and we should not allow such unchecked activity," he said. Sounds like Homeland Security, Kazakh style.
These issues are just a start: intolerance toward people of "non-preferred" faiths are subject to persecution in many countries that are more familiar than the ones I've mentioned above.
Other than pray and be thankful that "there but for the grace of God go I," what can we do? Most of us are ill-equipped to strut into an embassy and demand change. One thing we can do is to support those who work actively to speak up for religious liberty around the world.
That's one of many reasons I support the Baptist World Alliance, which is respected around the world and often speaks up for the cause of religious liberty.
And just think: In America, at least, we're perfectly free to do so.
Friday, February 8, 2008
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2 comments:
I am so glad you mentioned the Baptist World Alliance Tony, they do such good work and have been so maligned by the SBC that many think they are almost evil.
And I appreciate that you stay above the mud slinging and stay with fact and it gives me hope that there is a voice for common sense and freedom to believe here also. There are times when I am not so sure that some of our houses of worship won't be shut down, or cast aside.
"a voice for common sense and freedom to believe here also."
Most definitely. Funny the way we speak of such an uncommon thing as "common sense." I think in years past, before so many things have been done to "dumb down" the population, for instance, there was a lot more common sense around.
2 examples: parent used to watch their children, in the days before we had to legislate such things as the size of picket spacing so that kids would not get their tiny little heads caught in them. And, lawn mowers used to know enough to keep their hands and feet out from under their mowers, back in the days before we had to build them so they won't run unless you keep your hands on the handle.
We sure have come a long way in our "dumbing down of the population."
I started writing this comment to make a comment about mud-slingers. I ran across this last week, and it applies so much toward those who seek to discuss philosophical topics like religion. Enjoy!
"I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one."
Ludwig Feuerbach
1804-1872, German Philosopher
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